Herman-Scheer

Chief Creative Officer

Herman-Scheer is a branding agency in Venice, CA that helps entrepreneurs come to market.

Co-Founder

AIGA Los Angeles

Advisory Board Member

Member

The University of Arizona

Graphic Designer

Point to Point, Inc.

- Creating and developing case studies for their finished B2B projects.
- Sitting in on creative briefs for new projects
- Participate in brainstorming sessions with copy and creative director.

Intern

Building and evolving brands

Hi, I'm John, Chief Creative Officer at Herman-Scheer, a strategic and creative brand consultancy. We believe the businesses that prioritize connection over transaction are the ones that succeed. 

Since 2010, Herman-Scheer has helped change the way businesses make people feel. We have big heart and daring instincts. A sunny disposition and assertive gait. 

I consider myself a people-people kind of person, enamored by how brands connect to people and how people connect to brands. I love working with businesses that—put simply—keep people healthy and happy.

My career journey has been about embracing the idea that friction makes fire. 

I believe in mixing the intuitive and familiar with the audacious and novel, creating a healthy tension to captivate and engage. This friction, this interplay of ideas, is where I believe brands find their true voice and distinctive edge.

Alongside Chapin, (The Herman to my Scheer), we’ve built an agency with a strong POV: great health and self-care brands create narratives and identities aimed at changing behaviors—experiences so compelling that customers stick with a product or service even before they see the tangible benefits.

If you're in the wellness industry looking to evolve your brand toward lasting impact, let’s talk shop.

Feel free to reach out here or email me at john@herman-scheer.com.

John Scheer

When I was a 17 y/o senior in high school, our whole class got to do what was called a senior project, a month or so of real-world experience before graduation. 

I chose to intern at an advertising agency called Point To Point. 

I had two assignments while I was there...

The first was scanning all of their print ads from magazines into a digital database - tedious but oddly satisfying...

The second challenge was to select an ad from any magazine and come up with three alternative ideas that were better than what went to print, then pitch them to the entire agency.

I found a boring ad for a Cobra radar detector and gave it a shot...

I spent at least two weeks sketching my ideas onto paper, doing my best to illustrate, write, and learn Photoshop well enough to make it look as legit as possible...

Fast forward 20 years and Nano Banana Pro comes out...

As a way to learn and experiment with it, I decided to recreate my senior project.

It took me about 7.5 minutes to do, and in stark contrast to my shitty high school drawings, well...thumb through the carousel. 

Still processing what this all means, but the gap between idea and reality is becoming smaller and smaller...

Building and transforming the brands that make generations healthier.

Nano Banana Pro Test

Healthyish

I consult, advise, and invest innovative, mission-based health & healthcare companies (and their leaders) with a focus on marketing, but also product, strategy, AI, & growth.

A few companies I've had the privilege of working with:

- NOCD (fractional Chief Marketing Officer & Advisor, helped hire FT team)
- Oshi Health (fractional CMO & Advisor)
- Commons Clinic (fractional CMO & Advisor)
- Elion Health (fractional CMO & Advisor)
- Midi Health (interim-Chief Content Officer & Advisor)
- Parsley Health (fractional CMO & Advisor)
- Propel (marketing & content support)
- Ro Health (marketing & content support)
- GoodRx (helped start GoodRx Health)
- Greatness Media (helped launch Greatness.com)
- Elo Health (fractional CMO & Advisor, founding team)
- Ours Privacy (fractional CMO & Advisor)
- Hone Health (early content + marketing support & Advisor)
- Digital Media Society/DiMe (early marketing & strategy support)
- Undivided (fractional CMO & Advisor)
- First Dollar (fractional CMO & Advisor, helped hire FT team)
- Particle Health (fractional CMO & Advisor, helped hire FT team)
- Galileo Health (early marketing support & Advisor)

- Certify (Advisor, introduced to Series A lead)
- Peloton (Advisor & Investor)
- Allara Health (Advisor)
- 305 Fitness (Advisor & Investor)
- Two Front (Advisor & Investor, introduced to first institutional investor)

A few companies I've been lucky to invest in:

- OpenAI
- Anthropic AI
- Monument
- Elektra Health
- Juno Medical
- Kindbody
- Handspring Health
- Photon Health
- Hello Patient AI
- Journey Clinical
- Guaranteed Health
- Q Bio
- Luminate Medical
- Affect Therapeutics
- Bobbie
- Recess
- Sanzo
- Plunge
- Kingdom Supercultures

Consultant, Advisor, & Investor

Healthyish Content

Healthyish Content is the only health-focused SEO & content agency, producing premium (“best answer on the Internet”) articles for health & healthcare companies to diversify their acquisition and reduce costs.

Current/former clients include Midi Health, NOCD, Parsley Health, Oshi Health, Ro Health, Propel, Elion, First Dollar, Particle Health, Hone Health, & GoodRx.

Managing Partner

Senior Advisor

Aequitas Partners

Lakehouse Ventures

Venture Partner

Ness

At Ness, we swung big to compete with AmEx and build the next great credit card company, health-first.

Some highlights:

- Raised $50M in equity + debt from best-in-class early investors like Accomplice, Will Ventures, Portage, Core, and Digitalis.

- Landed best-in-class partnerships with Sweetgreen, Seed Health, Prenuvo, Exhale Spa, GlamSquad, Whole30, & Jonathan Van Ness plus reached a monthly audience of 150K per through an online publication and weekly newsletter.

- Grew a proprietary database of 20K+ healthy merchants across the country, mostly relying on user-generated submissions and machine learning-driven approval.

- Built and led a tremendous fintech & healthcare team (ex-Capital One, AmEx, Mastercard, Wells Fargo, Oscar Health, Cityblock Health) to successfully launch a consumer credit card that rewarded members for healthy spend & activities.

- Developed a credit card platform from scratch, bringing together great partners like Mastercard, The Bank of Missouri, Galileo, Canopy, Alloy, Evervault, & Plaid to create our own credit card stack for flexibility and financial upside.

- Engineered a novel HSA integration, flagging eligible purchases and allowing users to pay them down directly from their HSA account.

- Ultimately, Ness cardmembers spent over $2K/month and achieved 640K healthy actions. Our top 50 cardholders spent $4.8K/month with 40 average monthly transactions. 76% of cardholders said the Ness card led them to make healthier choices.

After almost pivoting into building co-brand B2B2C card with health plans like UHC/Optum, we unfortunately shut the business down in late 2023.

CEO & Founder

Greatist

At Greatist, we built an iconic health & wellness brand and media company, reaching 20M unique visitors per month, 2M daily email subscribers, and 1M+ social media followers at its peak.

Some highlights:

- Grew traffic through 100% organic methods (SEO, social/Pinterest, and more) with a unique emphasis on high-quality, science-backed, and expert-approved content.

- Built a profitable 8-figure business from advertising, affiliate, and sponsorship revenue (Target, Mars, KIND, Kaiser Permanente, RxBar).

- Hired and led an amazing team of 100 employees with an award-winning culture.

- Raised $20M in venture capital from world class investors like Floodgate & Gary Vaynerchuk.

Acquired by Healthline / Red Ventures.

Clicker Media Inc

Growth & Strategy

GTM-Savvy Business Builder | Founded Ness & Greatist

I'm a mission-driven business builder deeply passionate about making health affordable and accessible for everyone.

I previously built Greatist into the largest health & wellness media site on the Internet for millennials (acquired by Healthline/Red Ventures in 2019) and built a health-first credit card company from scratch with Ness (unfortunately shut down in 2023.)

Over the years, I've become a truly full-stack health & healthcare marketer, growing and engaging consumers (or key B2B decision-makers) at scale across almost every channel—all packaged into a builder mindset of a successful 2x startup founder.

Currently, I'm involved in various projects through my personal holding company of sorts called Healthyish.

I don't typically connect with folks I haven't met over LinkedIn, but feel free to send me a message.

Derek Flanzraich

A bunch of you asked me to turn this into a series, and I’m more than happy to oblige!

Here are my latest, EXTREMELY scientific rankings of health fads and buzzy topics. They’re placed on the dual spectrums of Accessible → Exclusive and Evidence-based → Overhyped.

I cover all of these topics and many, many more in my weekly 5HT newsletter, where I share 5 healthyish things that fascinate, enrage, intrigue, or challenge me.

Please tell me what I got right and wrong in the comments—and what else you want to see ranked in my next matrix.

Builder & Health Founder | CEO, Healthyish Content | Writes 5HT weekly | Advisor to brands making health more accessible

One of the best parts about my job: watching people build things that matter.

As we wrap up the year, I want to celebrate some of the big wins I’ve seen:

Ashwin Muralidharan, Andii Davis, Elliot Cohen & the whole General Medicine team launched their awesome AI feature that pulls in your health records and helps you take action on them.

John Capecelatro, Owen Muir, Carlene MacMillan, Elliot Cohen & the whole Radial team on their $50M fundraise announcement.

Cathrin Bowtell, Sam Wheatley, Ara Katz & the whole Seed Health team on a banging new brand evolution (seriously, check it out).

Also congrats to Abigail Bertelson & the Zenith Health team on an amazing new brand (go Herman-Scheer, go!).

Connie Kwang announced the launch of Hera to help manage your parent's care (covered by Medicare)

Robin Berzin, Yiwen Looi, Joshua Petrovani Miller & the whole Parsley Health team on launching BYO Labs!

Halle Tecco, MPH, MBA’s Massively Better Healthcare book is coming out in January (pre-order it like I did!)

Eudēmonia Summit scaled to 5,000 attendees in their second year. Impressed by Sean Hoess, Tyler Wakstein, & team.

Lightwork Home Health’s assessment formally launched this quarter! I recently did it and shared a recap in 5HT. Congrats Jay Devram, Johnny Bowman, Dom Francks, & team!

Friend Patrick Sullivan Jr. launched his Breaking Big Food docu—now available on Apple TV & Amazon Prime Video 📺. 

Friend Brynn launched a new connected screen for gaming called Board. I’ve got one and can’t wait to play with it… once it’s unwrapped by the kiddos.

And this post would definitely be incomplete without the highlights from home:

- Nora turns three this month (!!)
- The girls crushed their first rock-climbing session with me
- Sara’s tennis team finished the season ranked #1

As for me—I’m heading into the holidays grateful for the work I get to do, and even more grateful for my family, who make everything feel worth it.

I make health accessible and fun | Built Greatist | Running Healthyish Content | Writing 5HT

I’m very pro-AI in healthcare tech—but I draw the line at robot massages.

I tried one when I was visiting NYC a few months ago.

Look, I get the appeal: High-end hotels and spas invest once in the tech, and then it’s just maintenance costs. No human therapists with their scheduling conflicts and personalized approaches. 

Here’s what I liked:
- You control the settings with an iPad and can switch it up any time
- No small talk!

And what I didn’t like:
- It felt like the robot was executing a pre-set sequence, rather than responding to my body’s aches and pains. 
- It’s not particularly relaxing to lay on the table thinking, “what if this very strong robot malfunctions and starts pushing waaaay too hard?”

There’s a reason massage therapists are trained and certified. They learn how to work with people individually and to adjust their technique as they go. I’m a huge fan of my monthly crazy deep tissue AUSTINDEEP massage. 

I get the vision of Aescape. One day, maybe AI robot massages will crush (except not literally). 

But for now, I’ll definitely take the small talk.

🛑 Stop asking: "How long does it take for SEO to work?"

Start asking: "How long does it take to build search engine authority?"

We just published a new article from Healthyish Content breaking down exactly when results tend to show—and why timelines have (paradoxically!) been shorter for smart, well-optimized content.

For brand-new or low-authority sites, we're talking:

📍 0–3 months = foundational work (site structure, schema, internal linking, crawl-ready content)
📍 3–6 months = long-tail keywords begin surfacing
📍 6–12 months = main keywords rise, old content can get a boost with minor edits
📍 12–16 + months = first major breakthrough with compounding traffic, conversions, real SEO equity

For mid- to high-authority domains, the lift comes sooner—often weeks, we've even sometimes seen within the first month!

The kicker is with AI-generated content (I prefer the term "AI slop" just saying) flooding the web, the bar for quality has quietly collapsed. Especially in high-trust verticals like health, human-driven content published with strategy and care can rocket past the noise.

Anyway, if you want SEO to pay off, now’s the time to press "go," double down on real expertise, and treat content as the long game it’s always been. 

Check out my full breakdown (timelines, real client case studies, and why GEO/AEO is adding a whole new dimension) over on the blog. 👇

I don’t need to tell you the holidays are basically here. (I know you’re learning which email lists to unsubscribe to thanks to all the holiday sales, too).
I love the holidays, buuut that doesn’t mean they don’t stress me out either. 

So if you’re “ho ho ho” sounds a bit more like “no no no,” I’ve been there too. Actually data from the American Psychological Association shows nearly nine in 10 U.S. adults say something causes them stress during the holiday season.

Sometimes that stress is inevitable. It’s basically as much a part of the season as pumpkin pie (a favorite). 

But I also know from all my research related to 5HT, too much stress can lead to things like neuroinflammation, disrupted sleep, and gut troubles (yes, the gut-mind connection is real). So, every year, when I feel the Grinch in me coming out, I focus on a few, small interventions to keep my cool: 

🎁 Schedule my next rock climbing session
🎁 Increase my daily meditation from 10 to 15 minutes
🎁 Go to bed earlier than the night before 
🎁 Give myself a break for eating too many gingerbread cookies
🎁 Do a coffee run and linger a bit just for a break
🎁 Repeat my “this is fine” mantra like the dog in the meme
🎁 Rewatch a comfort show episode with Sara
🎁 Give my kids 20 minutes of undivided play time
🎁 Book another AustinDeep massage
🎁 Go for a walk around the block and listen to my fave podcast
🎁 Text a friend something encouraging or just to check in
🎁 Say “no” to an upcoming social commitment
🎁 Get to inbox zero (never easier than during the holidays!)
🎁 Drink ginger turmeric tea with honey
🎁 Write down 3 things I’m grateful for (science says it works)
🎁 Plan a future trip or tiny adventure (anticipation = mood boost)

What’s your anti-Grinch protocol? Hit me with your interventions in the comments 👇

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The Battle

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